{ Islam from inside }

A
Most Dangerous Game

Added Aug 09, 2003

This article was written in the fall of
2001 - it was
published in the "Globe and Mail's" Facts and Arguments section.

It's late and the room is dark except for the flickering light cast
by
the television. I should be in bed but the endless analysis and
commentary on the trade centre attack and America's unrelenting
military response mesmerizes me. On the screen is an ochre-tinted map
of Afghanistan and the countries that border it. An orange tinge seeps
into the room as the map expands and bleeds past the edges of the tube.
Tiny word boxes pop-up on the map as an unseen commentator talks. Each
box contains short descriptive phrases and point-form summaries about
Afghanistan's bordering nations and their military significance to the
United States in this crisis. I notice that by the tv's projected
light, my skin is the color of Afghanistan's desert sands, and as I
watch the strategic overview, with its tiny moving icons of planes,
destroyers, missiles and troops, a feeling of unreality, of a
disturbing absurdity washes over me.

I had this feeling earlier in this crisis as well. A news program
played an endless loop of the trade centre crash footage - a horrific,
surreal viewing experience in which the planes high speed hammer-blows
demolish the trade center towers again and again. As a follow-up,
hastily assembled computer graphics were used to illustrate the
flight-path taken. Icons of tiny cartoon-like airplanes moved jerkily
across the screen and crashed into cartoon trade center towers followed
by comic book style explosions.

Watching this, I wondered if it was possible that the terrorists
storyboarded their attack strategy in a similar way - planning their
attack route with sketched out icons. Or perhaps they used monopoly
style game pieces and a map of Manhattan. This would be entirely
appropriate, I thought - after all, when you map out strategies in
games you do not have to factor in human suffering..

When we play a game like Monopoly, we do not question what effect our
land purchases, our strategically extravagant rental rates, and our
accumulation of key properties would have on people in the real
world. We play to win - morality is not part of the game. On a game
board you factor out human consequences in favor of strategy. The human
consequences only get in the way of creating winning manoeuvres. Is it
possible the terrorists worked out their game plan in this manner -
focusing on a "winning" strategy in which the trade centre towers were
merely a symbolic game piece to be removed from the board.

Today we have elaborate computer games which allow the
administration of vast simulated realms and kingdoms (games like
Tropico, Age of Empires, Civilization etc.). In these games, human
factors such as a population's material and social needs and desires
are a part of the simulation. Strategy is more complex than in most
board games as you must balance conquest with your 'virtual' citizen's
needs. While you dispatch marauding armies to nearby kingdoms, you must
also struggle to keep your own population content and controlled so
that they support your military conquests, suppression of rebellions,
destruction of enemies, theft of resources and other acts of empire
building and maintenance. These human factors are simply additional
volatile parameters that must be managed effectively to keep them from
interfering with the games main objective - dominance. The human
parameter adds spice to the game, but is not its focus.

Now, as I watch the war unfolding on tv, conveyed through colorful
maps and cartoon icons, I feel a sense of dread creep over me. Map
based overviews give way to live footage of Afghan refugees, demolished
buidings, demonstrations in the streets, grainy nightime images of
cruise missile strikes, press briefings by White House and military
staff, and emotional expressions of support for the war from American
citizens.

Then, an "expert" on terrorism explains the possible measures that can
be taken "to smoke out" the terrorists. He goes on to explain how this
will be a first step of a global plan, a long battle to eliminate
terrorism, and expounds on necessary tradeoffs
between civilian casualties and the determination needed for
achievement of desired objectives. Is it possible, I think, that the
terrorists spoke to each other about similar tradeoffs. Another map is
on the screen now. It is heavily overlaid with little icons and arrows,
but I'm no longer paying any attention to the important strategy it
purports to illustrate.

I start to wonder if the life of nations is simply a great game in
which the players struggle to position their pieces for maximum
advantage, leverage, and gain. Certain players have the advantage and
dominate the board, others struggle to maintain their moderately
favorable positions, some struggle to simply remain in the game, and a
few try desperate and audacious strategies to change the course of
play. The idea seems absurd and yet I cannot shake it. Like one of the
virtual citizens in a computer simulation, I feel as if I am, at this
juncture in history, only a resource to be managed so that I do not
disturb the momentum of the great game.

I do not think the principal players in such a game actively seek to do
evil. But they are playing for their own advantage and so they make
whatever moves they deem necessary to achieve this advantage. Each one
seeks to protect and to advance their position and in this way the game
progresses through endlessly complex dynamics - forever different, but,
at root, forever the same. They don't seek to do evil, but for the sake
of the game, they accept the evil that is done.

Perhaps that is one of the faces of real malevolence - that some play
this world like a vast, infinitely intricate strategy game. We are all
resources in this game. Depending on our individual stances, we are
utilized, mobilized, managed, positioned, deployed, manipulated,
ignored, silenced, or removed. The game is played. Pieces are moved.
Power plays are set into motion. The board shifts and changes. People
suffer. People die. Our humanity fades. But it's all just part of a
game - a most dangerous game.

- Irshaad Hussain

Continuity and coherence

At its best, our era is not graced with serenity. These are event
driven times, full of motion, movement, turmoil - an antithesis to
contemplation. For us, for our time, the future rarely extends its
horizon beyond the next month, or week, or day. And so we tend to hang
on every oscillation in stock prices, anticipate the turn of fortune
that the next market update may herald, and, in troubled times,
diligently follow the ever-shifting state of the world. We watch
incessantly, intently, so focused on each advancing tick of the
event-clock that past and future are seemingly banished to the cloudy,
unfocused edges of peripheral vision. The principle of cause and effect
in human affairs recedes into irrelevancy, and like a bewildered
amnesiac we dwell in a disconnected, decoupled, never-ending present.

And so we are in danger of being left with no point of reference with
which to judge events and insufficient context with which to understand
them. With vast amounts of knowledge at our fingertips, with technology
that borders on magic at our daily command, with mountains of
information at our disposal, we seem nevertheless destined to
repeatedly encounter disaster and horror around the world and to meet
it by dealing out the same. Over time, as the never-ending present we
dwell in grows increasingly nightmarish, increasingly brutal, we will
shake our heads in confusion and wonder how all this could come to be -
and we will never know if we cut ourselves adrift from the sources
which would help us to understand and solve our problems. Past and
future - cause and effect - continuity and coherence.

Only the noise and clamour of the present remains - the cold horror of
sudden death by terror, the hollow rhetoric of leaders, the strategies
of war, the crushing blows of armies, the moment by moment media
reports. The energy of events overrides all historical perspectives
except those that pertain to tactics and propaganda. Between the
endlessly broadcast opinions of "experts" and the images of hi-tech air
to ground assaults, our society's signal to noise ratio has become so
feeble that little that is meaningful or coherent can be discerned.
Reflection and thoughtfulness are drowned in a sea of "white noise".

Yet between the the din of conflict and the clatter of the media, there
are many voices of tenderness, humanity, patience, truth, and mercy.
These voices are present among every group, every religion, every
culture, every language. They do not have weapons of terror or the
power of empires at their disposal, their efforts occur in the spaces
between events, often drowned out by the incessant shouting of the
powerful. But their simple and quiet traces are worth more than all the
posturing and clamoring of this era's demagogues. They do not cover
over, conceal, or shrug off what has gone before. They seek to
illuminate the present with the light of the past and show the
possibilities of hope for the future. They do not cause suffering -
they relieve it. Their voices speak with determination from all shores
of the world. These are the voices worth listening for....

Everything's under control

Look to the past to see the future reality. As economic
difficulties arise, as resources are drained, as weariness of long
sieges set in, as others move to make their power plays, the game which
once seemed so enticing, so certain to bring victory - which gave a
heady a sense of driving the future, of creating the future, will tire
even the strong - perhaps make them wish to withdraw from this
particular round of the game, or perhaps cause them to play ever
harsher hands to
maintain dominance.

Everything's always under control....until it spins out of control. The
war on terror can be efficiently
managed, the whole world can be managed - just as the dot.com world
thought they could maintain their bubble, just as the telecommunication
industries forecast endless growth, just as Enron and others
thought they could manage their crooked finances - just before sudden
collapse - just before the bubbles burst or deflate.

This war on terror is not a simple company management situation - there
are so many variables - so much volatility - so many possible outcomes,
so many competing ambitions, so much ruthlessness, so many unsavory
alliances, so
many grudges, so many high-level crooks, so many lies, so many false
justifications, so much ill-feeling, so much greed, so little human
concern,
so little truth - how impossible it is to control the outcome of such
complex dynamics.

About this article

Back in September 2001 when the U.S. was
preparing for it's attack on Afghanistan, there was saturation coverage
of the preparations for war. Endless commentaries on the details of the
weapons to be deployed and the strategies to be used, combined with the
analysis of "experts" on the region, filled the network channels with
minute by minute coverage of the unfolding situation. Once the war
began the reporting became obsessively focused on the technological and
strategic details of the campaign, it's whiz-bang weaponry and hi-tech
equipment. After several nights of watching this mind-numbing and
dehumanizing coverage I turned off the TV and wrote the 'Most Dangerous
Game' article. It was
published in the Globe and Mail's Facts and Arguments section.